Coke Balancing Illusion

Another Do it Yourself (DIY) optical illusion. Send in your own and you to will see yourself here.

coke balancing
Flickr Artist: kneilp
Tags: photos, optical_illusions, illusions, art

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DIY Dragon Optical Illusion

Below are two videos of Dragons that have been created by folding paper. They are not motorized in any fashion and at no point in either video do the dragon's move in the slightest.

However due the way they are folded and an optical illusion they will all appear to follow the camera. First user jdannan on YouTube.com shares this video of his pet dragon.

Second user leezbot on YouTube.com shares this video of a small dragon family. The family is very nice and I believe that the little blue dragon above originated with this family before striking out on his own.


If you would like to create your own pet dragon click the below image and download the large image to your computer. Then using A4 size paper print out the template and follow the directions.

I will follow up later this week with an explanation and examples on why this optical illusion occurs.

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Summertime Optical Illusion Fun

I constantly get people coming to this site by searching for "scary optical illusion", I've seen many optical illusions but I wouldn't call any of them scary. Unless of course you are 4 years old. I mean if you were very young then this illusion might be scary.

Personally I love this illusion it is a special summertime illusion that the whole family can enjoy.

For those of you that get to the beach this year try your own illusion and send the picture in to this site. I might create a special section for do it yourself illusions. This won't be limited to beach illusions, any image that tricks our perception is welcome.

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Hand in the Monitor Optical Illusion

Of all of the transparent desktops created that were featured in the previous post this one was the most convincing. The desktop below is a very cleverly created optical illusion.

Many of the desktops used hands or arms to make the illusion of a transparent desktop real to the viewer. This is the only one that puts the hand into the picture from the front. All of the desktop creations in this flicker set make it a point of emphasizing that they were not photoshopped. I don't know if we can say the same of this creation.

How do you think this one illusion was accomplished? Could it have been done without photo manipulation? Could the calculator be real (or a real cut out picture) and hanging or propped up by something? I found this desktop here.

The truth is this was not photoshopped either. The calculator was just lanched in front of the background image of his hand. This was a very clever illusion indeed.

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Optical Camouflage, Science is at it Again

A group from Japan has developed a form of optical camouflage. Optical camouflage is a kind of active camouflage. It allows the viewer to see what is behind the object or person being camouflaged. Click on either picture below to see a video of this technology in action.

Once you check out the way this technology works (at this site) you'll realize the applications are limited. Their paper gives one example of allowing a pilot to see the runway through the floor of the plane allowing for a more intuitive landing.

You'll see below some people think that having a computer desktop that is transparent is also something that might be of interest to the consumers out there. Of course there are better ways to create a transparent desktop than using the technology above. You can see the whole gallery of transparent desktops here.

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